“When Governments and Corporations do not live up to their obligations, it is only
solidarity among workers, trade unions and people’s groups that can carry us forward.”
It is 23 years since the Union Carbide plant in Bhopal exploded, killing and maiming countless thousands as toxic gas swept over the city's poorest inhabitants. Its US owners deserted the devastated site , still contesting their liability to pay the victims compensation. But the legacy of the disaster, and the continued lack of any clean-up operation, claims more lives even today.This is our Country, India, claiming to have more millionaires and Billionaires than any other country in the World.
Union Carbide, renamed as Dow Chemicals is being encouraged by the spineless Union commerce minister and the government of India to consider investments in the same country in which it killed innocent civilians and refused to pay any compensation .And the Tata's are brokering a deal so as to making it easier for them to leapfrog errant judiciary and bigoted regulations .
This deplorable company should not be allowed to have any shady links with a country in which it has been utterly ruthless.Let us be practical here , where can this happen? How can this be allowed to happen? How can the very country to whose citizens it has inflicted unspeakable damage accommodate them again?Do we need the money that sucked the blood of children in their graves?
Look at those photos , how can the government be so spineless . It is a blatant disregard of human lives the government has vowed to protect .We are living in a world where everything from the water that we drink and the air that we breathe are getting bottled and sold. A powerful hidden hand of corporations are ubiquitous .There was a East India company for India, a United fruit company for the Latin America , it will be soon globalization and its patrons in the free world(what ever that means when everything is charged) .
Three years after the September 11 attacks Americans are willing to put up with almost anything if they are told they are being kept safe from terror. Their corporate masters don’t feel the same way. While we submit to strip searches in airports, chemical plants across the U.S. can be easily sabotaged. The chemical industry has successfully fought all attempts to regulate safety standards.
Meanwhile back at the corporate ranch, Dow Chemical purchased Union Carbide in 1991. Dow also denies any responsibility for liability or for cleaning up the site but ASSURES that it has “never forgotten that tragic event.” Thank God for small favors. I am sure that the physically and emotionally scarred survivors of Bhopal are grateful that Dow remembers them.
3 comments:
The write up about “Dow” was aggressive but sadly the data provided are not accurate enough. There‘s a common misconception about Dow chemicals among people, so I would like to throw light on the actual picture of Bhopal Disaster and the current scenario.
Here are a few points about Union Carbide & Bhopal Disaster
1. The Union Carbide plant that was operating in Bhopal was a joint venture of UCC & UCIL. According to Indian law, UCIL (union carbide India limited) was responsible for operating the plant and the operation was licensed in their name. Today UCIL has gone out of existence. Dow chemicals took over only UCC (union Carbide Corp)
2. The Bhopal disaster killed several hundred people; majority of them belonged to the shanty town developed outside the plant illegally.
3. Methyl Iso Cyanide was the killer gas which was not the major product; MIC was just an intermediate in the manufacture of a pesticide CARBYRYL.
4. The entire accident was a mistake of a small group of sleepy Indian operators. The scrubber unit that controls the emission of effluent gases was in “shut down” and the operators were alarmed. The entire process design was such that even if the entire carbyryl was burnt, it wouldn’t have affected even 5 % of the damage caused by MIC. It was one single operator who connected a water pipeline into MIC storage by mistake and gone out. The already full tank developed pressure and burst out releasing all its contents to the scrubber unit which erratically released it to the atmosphere. This thing came as surprise to the workers at scrubber unit and they were completely helpless at the last minute.
5. The only mistake from the union carbide’s side was to store the intermediate product unnecessarily, but the technology that their licensor provided was like that.
6. The disaster took place on 2nd December 1984 and ever since UCC is urging the Indian government to permit them to pay the compensation and get things settled out. Of course paying back compensation is no good justification but still it is better than the hanging situation prevailing now. Believe it or not, the actual settlement that has to be given to its then workers is still under our Indian court’s hammer!!! Now tell me, what stops Indian government from allowing UCC to pay the workers’ settlement? Don’t you understand where the problem exactly is?
7. Today the “Dow” that wants to invest in India or which has already started investing in India is completely different from the then UCC/UCIL. Every thing has changed – the management, the operating procedures, the safety precautions and more importantly the governmental officials responsible for industrial supervisions.
Nobody wants to kill people, including the “Dow” or the UCC as you might say. Literally speaking Dow has just bought UCC’s assets and thrown all those irresponsible people and their actions. If you say that building a factory is a crime then India is filled with criminals. The US hasn’t built a petroleum refinery since 1976 and now we are building world’s largest refinery hub. Though we are not an active participant in ‘Carbon trading’, there are very obvious chances that we are going to lose lot of money in the near future.
If we have to prevent “Dow” chemicals from setting up a factory in India for environmental safety, then we have to stop lot of other industries too. There are high chances that the prevailing industries might cause disasters worse than the Bhopal‘s.
It’s unfair to neglect Dow alone just because they have bought an industry that killed several people a quarter century ago. Dow says that haven’t forgotten the Bhopal disaster, yes they haven’t. They are more cautious and well prepared now. It’s our government’s tragic policy that encourages such a big industrial infrastructure growth in the name of “Nation Building” and increasing employment. Dow has got nothing to do with it; they are just one of the customers in line. It looks a form of “untouchability” to be mean towards Dow alone.
So the final solution doesn’t arrive by merely driving out foreign investments on Indian soil, but by being cautious and strict about the Standard Operating Procedures and by permitting companies on “non sentimental” basis.
Hey Flash ,
Couple of comments,
In point 2, you have mentioned that it was a illegal settlement, be it legal or illegal, a death is a death, but as you say most of the problem were with our people. They should have moved those people from the place.
In point 3, you have mentioned MIC as methyl Iso Cyanide , its actually Methyl isocynate:-)
regards,
White Ghost
ya it was methyl iso cyanate only sorry....mic + phosphoegnic treatment yields CARBYRYL...
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